What about Microsoft and its occasional patent threats to Linux? My job has been preparing for those activities for more years than Microsoft has been preparing. I have been thinking about how their patent portfolio might be used against the free world since long before the bulk of the free world was my client. I have spent more time studying that problem than Microsoft has spent creating that problem. It doesn’t keep me awake at nights but it keeps me at work during the day. If in the process of irreversible change, Microsoft launches its missiles, which other dying empires like the Soviet Union, have managed not to do, but if as a dying empire Microsoft launches its missiles, we will protect our clients. If they die without launching their missiles, it will be better for everyone.

One of the main issues that Professor Moglen addressed in the latest software licence is software patents and abuse that comes from various trolls, including Microsoft and its siblings. Groklaw brings back from the past the story about “the original patent troll”. Now, that’s innovative.

Raymond Niro rarely looks for clients anymore. Instead, the charming, Chicago-based litigator hunts for patents. This unconventional strategy has made him rich and, in some circles anyway, infamous.

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The criminal enterprise known as Microsoft finds itself embarrassingly exposed in the courtroom, for the IRS belatedly (decades too late) targets the company in an effort to tackle massive tax evasions

A look at some of last week's patent news, with imperative responses that criticise corporate exploitation of patents for protectionism (excluding and/or driving away the competition using legal threats)

Vista 10 to bring new ways for spies (and other crackers) to remotely access people's computers and remotely modify the binary files on them (via Windows Update, which for most people cannot be disabled)